Recorded in the Cathedral of Maguelone, France, in October 2010 Engineered and produced by Aline Blondiau Executive producer: Carlos Céster Design: Valentín Iglesias Booklet essay: Tess Knighton English Français Deutsch Español

Dominique Vellard’s interest in music from the Iberian Renaissance has been constantly reflected in the performances and recordings of his Ensemble Gilles Binchois across the last three decades and all his experience and insight in this area is now being brought to bear on a new recording (a sparkling addition to his work for Glossa) of the Missa Nunca fue pena mayor by Francisco de Peñalosa, a composer who Vellard regards as being “a composer of extreme importance and a ‘classic’ of the Spanish Renaissance long before Cristóbal de Morales.”

In addition to the Mass – regarded as Peñalosa’s masterpiece – Vellard adds a selection of motets and hymns, which includes not just Sacris solemniis but also the Memorare Piissima (over which scholars have long debated its precise attribution). Dominique Vellard (together with four other singers specially chosen for this repertoire) is joined in these performances – made in Maguelone Cathedral – by the rich instrumental brass talents of the Toulouse-based Les Sacqueboutiers, led by Jean-Pierre Canihac and Daniel Lassalle.

This new Glossa release, demonstrating once more the label’s happy and skilled flair with early music from Spain, adds significantly to the meagre selection of recordings devoted to the music of Francisco de Peñalosa, one which is graced inside by a thoughtful essay on the composer by the leading scholar of all that there is in early Iberian music, Tess Knighton, and on the outside by a striking usage of a painting by another of Peñalosa’s contemporaries, Pedro Machuca.

Since starting making recordings for Glossa in 2007 Dominique Vellard has been demonstrating the broad range of interests which have been so influential over the thirty years of the career of his Ensemble Gilles Binchois and which help to make up this complex musical personality. From the earliest polyphonies interspersed with Gregorian Chant (in L’Arbre de Jessé and the reissued Music and Poetry in St Gallen) to 21st century compositions from Vellard himself and Jean-Pierre Leguay (in Vox nostra resonet and Motets croisés) by way of the 17th century polyphony of Monteverdi, Schütz and Frescobaldi, some of the facets of Vellard’s continuing interest in religious music have been reflected on the label. [read more...]

“It is the same effect as when you see the sun shining through stained-glass windows in a church: suddenly all the colours are singing.”

After nearly three decades of carving out a niche (as rich as Romanesque statuary found in the Burgundy where he lives and works), Dominique Vellard has returned with a new vigour for performing (and recording), whether it is with his colleagues from the Ensemble Gilles Binchois or as a solo singer. The tenor voice of this deeply-thinking musician has the capacity to explore and explain the messages and subtleties of liturgical traditions that range far beyond the Western tradition. [read more...]

I began to compose seriously back in 1999. Prior to that I always liked making song arrangements or fauxbourdons, or writing pieces ‘in the style’ of, for instance, 14th or 15th century songs. Very often in the medieval field, of course, we need to add some voices or to complete some defective parts. I had no real desire to compose – I didn’t think that it was my field. I was a singer, after all, and music from the past is so good, whether it was from composers of the 17th century or Ligeti. Then, one day, in Sheffield in England, I was asked by Peter Cropper of The Lindsays whether there were any chants in existence that could accompany Haydn’s Seven Last Words. On not finding any interesting pieces in the repertory and whilst being at home, I started writing three-part pieces – for my wife, my daughter and myself. I was I bit surprised to see that it was working and on finishing the compositions I found that they had some sense! [read more...]